Portsea – The Nosey Genealogist's: Help Me With My Family Tree

13/09/2015

Family History records for Portsea Island workhouse ancestors

Last week I was in Portsmouth and took advantage of an opportunity to pop into The Portsmouth History Centre which is on the second floor of the Portsmouth Central Library near the Guildhall.

It comprises of the City Records Office Archive as well as holding the library resources on Portsmouth family, local and naval history plus the Arthur Conan Doyle and Charles Dickens collections.

My interest was in the Portsea Workhouse, an institution in which my 3 x great-grandmother, Martha Malser, had died as an inmate in February 1870 aged 70. While the History Centre have the workhouse Creed registers from 1879 to 1953, which served as admission registers, the earlier records have very sadly not survived. This being the case meant I was unable to do any personal family history research this time.

I was, however, able to call up the Board of Guardians minute books for the time that my ancestor was living under their care in her old age. While not giving me any direct references to Martha it was an extremely interesting bit of research as it gave me a flavour of the organisation and an insight into its operation. For others, this could be a goldmine of family information.

These Board of Guardians minute books are a very name rich set of documents for those with ancestors who were officials, or who worked for the workhouse. Names were also recorded for suppliers to the institution of food, clothing, coal etc. This could be another opportunity for some researchers to find their family members mentioned, although often the supplier was simply noted by his surname alone. So you may see Jones £2 3s 6d, or Smith £0 4s 8d.

I read about the appointments made for named schoolmasters, matrons and various other officials to the workhouse. The records detail the taking of references for these people and the salaries that the Union would pay the successful candidates.

There was an interesting entry where the Board set out the duties they expected of the new clergyman. The number of days he was required to attend to the inmates spiritual needs, inside the workhouse, and the Eucharist services that he should provide for the workhouse inmates on the Sabbath.

Perhaps the most useful information for family historians, contained within these Board of Guardians minute books, was the records of people receiving “out relief”. Those who had become sick and were able to get some parish relief while not having to enter the workhouse. If your ancestor had fallen on hard times then these entries would give you both a surname and a first name, a place, the amount of out relief and also the reason for receiving the payment.

Most of the sicknesses that I read were general, such as “confinement”. I did read of some injuries such as back and leg, which would be expected of working men and women, though I did note one case of syphilis! Presumably this person was considered to be worthy of the care of the parish, so perhaps they were innocently infected with the disease.

To read more about the workhouse I recommend Peter Higginbotham’s site:
http://www.workhouses.org.uk/

There are also some modules on the workhouses and the Poor laws within the Family History Researcher Academy course on English/Welsh Family History See the special Trial Offer running currently by clicking this link: http://www.familyhistoryresearcher.com/trialoffer.

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06/09/201506/09/2015

Add colour to family history facts to make ancestors lives interesting

I was at a function recently and on my table was an enthusiastic family historian who had been tracing his family tree for many years. Next to him was the inevitable sceptic who tried to put us both in our place by saying just how boring she thought “gathering a load of names and dates was”. I didn’t enquire what her hobby was, or even if she had one at all.

I did surprised her, however, by agreeing and saying that one of my mantras that I repeat often in my contributions to the Family History Researcher Academy course is to find out about the lives, work, environment and social conditions that existed at the time that your forebears were alive.

If you have discovered, from a search of the census, that your Great Aunt Jane was in service in a large house then I would make an effort to go and visit the below stairs of a similar property. There are quite a few National Trust houses that meet the bill. On a visit to Erdigg in North Wales, this was exactly what I did. There the upstairs and downstairs were beautifully presented to give a feel for what life was like for our ancestors living in both levels of society.

As a worked example of what I teach, let’s consider my ancestor Henry Thomas Thorne. From the census of 1861, accessed on TheGenealogist I am able to discover him working in the Naval Dockyard at Portsmouth where he is employed as a rope-maker at H.M.Dockyard.

This weekend I had the chance to visit Portsmouth and not only go to the church where he married, but also to tour the Historic Dockyard and see an exhibit explaining how men like my 2x great-grandfather and his colleagues created the cordage that the Royal Navy of the time required for its ships.

I had previously obtained a copy of my ancestors’ wedding certificate from the GRO, having found their details in the Births, Marriages and Death Indexes that are available on various websites.

On this visit to Portsmouth I could now walk in the footsteps of my forebears on their wedding day the 5th February 1859 at St Mary’s, Portsea Island.

I could go on board H.M.S. Warrior, an actual warship from the time period (1860) and see how the cordage that he made was used on this ironclad steam and sail man-of-war.

And I could see the tools that Henry would have used everyday, in the exhibition piece there.

This story of my weekend excursion illustrates how I use the information that I discover in the records as a springboard to go on and find social history museums, or even the actual places that my ancestors would have gone to, and so build my family’s story.

If you haven’t moved past the gathering of names and dates stage in your family tree research, then I urge you to start doing so now.

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30/12/2012

In My Family Tree I’ve Two Marriges by Certificate!

Hope you have had a Merry Christmas and are looking forward to the new year.

I took advantage of the holiday time to take a look at the Plymouth and West Devon Parish Records on the Find My Past website. Here you can view the actual scanned documents from the archive in Plymouth if you have a subscription or buy some pay as you go credits.

Although I already have copies of the GRO certificates it is interesting to also look at the church registers and glean some extra information. I got several pieces of extra information on one set of ancestors that I had not got before, from carrying out this exercise. I’ll keep these for further article posts!

One of the interesting finds from looking at the scanned church register was that they were married according to the Rites and Ceremonies of the Established Church “by Superintendent Registrar’s Certificate.

A while back, in my family history research, I came across a marriage “by certificate” in my family tree in Portsmouth.

In the year 1859 my 2x great grandfather, Henry Thorne married Ellen Malser in Portsea, Hampshire. By all accounts it was in a church of the Church of England and according to their rites, but I was mystified by the fact it was not either by banns or by licence.

My investigation at the time indicted that â€œby certificateâ€ usually meant that the ceremony was conducted by a Registrar. This being common in nonconformist church weddings and at registry offices.

I sought out what Mark Herber had to say in his book, Ancestral Trails, and found the line: â€œFrom 1837 marriages could also take place before civil registrars, or in chapels licensed under the Civil Registrations Acts. The law permitted the superintendent registrar to issue a certificate (similar to an Anglican licence) authorising marriages (without banns) in licensed places of worshipâ€.

So here it was again in the 1866 marriage of another branch of my family and this time in Plymouth.

I have now found out that a Superintendent Registrar of a civil Register Office may issue a Certificate to permit a marriage to take place in an Anglican church on the following conditions.

One of the parties must have the required seven days residence within the registration district and within the parish where the marriage is to take place before applying for the Certificate.

Or the church where they wish to marry must be the usual place of worship of one or both of the parties.

The Registrar enters the details of the parties in a book which is open to public inspection and also displays a notice at the Register Office for 15 days. If no impediments are shown within the period of 15 days, a Superintendent Registrarâ€™s Certificate can be issued and so it is similar to reading banns.

A clergyman, however, is under no obligation to marry people who have chosen this preliminary, and in practice clergy will recommend banns or a Common Licence.

I have found on Barbara Dixon’s site, a tutorial regarding marriages and she indicates that a marriage “by superintendent registrars certificate” is comparatively rare. http://home.clara.net/dixons/Certificates/marriages.htm

It’s used for a Church of England marriage but instead of the banns being read in the church, notice of marriage would have been given to the superintendent registrar.

A reason for so doing could be necessitated where services were held so infrequently such as in the case of a small chapel, that it was not possible to call the banns on three successive Sundays and get married all within the three months time limit.

In later periods it was sometimes used as an expedient if for some reason the vicar did not want to make the forthcoming marriage in the church public knowledge. Banns would have required the entry in the banns book, which was open for anyone to look at.

The types of problem that could have caused this course to be taken could have been where a bride and groom were of different faiths and the vicar either didn’t want the congregation in general to know, or even the bride/grooms family to be aware especially where he feared they might try to disrupt the ceremony!

Today it is sometimes used when one of the couple is divorced and the vicar does not want it generally known that he is marrying a divorcee in his church.

So, comparatively rare or not I find I have two sets of ancestors who took advantage of the Superintendent Registrar’s Certificate.

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27/05/2012

Investigating my ancestor’s wedding certificate a little more

In the last posting about questions with my ancestor’s wedding certificate I discovered that the parish was not written on the document as I had expected it to be. Instead of St.Mary’s Portsea there was a series of pen strokes that seemed to begin with a P but could not be made out.

If you have read the comments, to that post, then you will see a suggestion from James Mac that it may have been a daughter church of St. Mary’s. He suggested I should try to tie down the incumbent, by using the resources of Crockford’s Clerical Directory. Well this is exactly what I did. In fact I used the 1865 edition that is available to search on Google Books for free.

From the copy of the certificate, that I had obtained from the General Register Office by post, I made out the name of the person marrying my 2x great-grandparents to be W H Rednap. I also noted that the marriage was by “Certificate”.

Now some folk have pointed out to me that “by certificate” usually means that the marriage was conducted by a Registrar. This is common in nonconformist church weddings and at registry offices. I turned to Mark Herber’s Ancestral Trails and found the line: “From 1837 marriages could also take place before civil registrars, or in chapels licensed under the Civil Registrations Acts. The law permitted the superintendent registrar to issue a certificate (similar to an Anglican licence) authorising marriages (without banns) in licensed places of worship”.

But even though the groom had been baptised in the Presbyterian church in Dartmouth, his wedding certificate indicates that it was carried out according to the Rites of the Established Church by one W H Redknap. Crockford’s confirms that William Henry Redknap was the Perpetual Curate of Milton, Portsea, in the diocese of Winchester from 1859, the year my ancestor’s married and formally the Curate of Portsea.

So then I looked into the history of Milton’s Church and found it was consecrated in 1841 and dedicated to St James, having been carved from the ancient parish of Portsea.

I do not know when in 1859 the Revd. Redknap took up his incumbency at nearby Milton, but my great-great-grandparents married in February 1859, in the early part of the year. So now I am leaning back towards the marriage having taken place in the main church of Portsea, by its curate before he moved to Milton. The Ancient Parish Church is St.Marys; but then this begs the question as to why it was “by certificate”?

I need now to consult the parish records of Portsea to lay this question to rest. Perhaps a trip to the Hampshire Archives is called for!

For more great tips to get your family tree back before 1837 in England & WalesÂ buy my CD:

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20/05/2012

Ancestor’s Marriage Certificate Throws Up Questions.

I have been looking more closely at an ancestor’s marriage certificate and have notice some interesting anomalies. When I had first come across the marriage ofÂ my 2x great-grandparents, Henry Thorn and Ellen Malser, on the familysearch.org website I had noted that the marriage was recorded in the register of St.Mary’s Portsea, a parish in Portsmouth, on the south coast of England. The wedding took place on the 5th of February 1859 while Henry was employed in the Naval Dockyard as a ropemaker.

I had assumed that the church, in which they married, was St.Marys and so this is what I recorded in my family tree at the time, but now I am not so sure. As you know, good practice for family historians teaches us to always seek out the original document. Looking at the online indexes I found the information that I would need to order their marriage certificate from the General Register Office.

When I had it in my possession I noticed that it did not say the Parish Church in St Marys Portsea. Instead it reads: Marriage solemnized at “the church” in the Parish of… followed by an indecipherable set of scratches!

The first resembles a “P” and then follows some strong up and down strokes which do not give us the whole picture of the letters. I tried to match them with legible letters in the rest of the certificate but I can not make them spell St.Marys! It is possible, I think, that the word may have been Portsea, but even of that I can not be sure.

Using the map search tool on familysearch.org (http://maps.familysearch.org/) I researched other churches in Portsea. A tip here is to use the town name and not the church, or parish – if I had entered “St Marys Portsea” it would not have worked. The result returned was a number of C of E churches in the area, all carved out of the ancient parish of Portsea.

From the marriage certificate I could see that both the bride and the groom gave their address as Raglan Street, Portsea. Returning to the familysearch.org map tool I was able to see that this road fell into two parishes, the further along its length you traveled. St Marys Portsea was the Parish Church for those living in the west and St Jude’s Southsea in the east.

The trouble is that neither of these fall happily into the pattern of strokes, that are all that can be seen in this particular wedding certificate. Can I assume that as St Marys was the mother church of Portsea that convention dictated it was the Parish of Portsea?

There are more questions about this particular certificate which I will deal with in my next post.

For more great tips to get your family tree back before 1837 in England & WalesÂ buy my CD:

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Tag: Portsea

Family History records for Portsea Island workhouse ancestors

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In My Family Tree I’ve Two Marriges by Certificate!

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Investigating my ancestor’s wedding certificate a little more

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Ancestor’s Marriage Certificate Throws Up Questions.

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